It has been over a month since Keith Elam, p/k/a Guru lost his battle with cancer. In an ideal world, Guru's passing would be the end of the story and the world could focus its attention on remembering the man and his various contributions to hip-hop history. Instead, we're left with a situation shrouded in mystery that seems to only become more bizarre as the days pass. For the benefit of those who haven't been following the stories of the past three months or so, I'll try to highlight (or perhaps lowlight) the most important dates and events.

On February 28th, the word started to spread on the net that Guru had suffered a heart attack and/or cardiac arrest and was in a coma. The following day, Yo! PR released an official statement confirming that the rumors were in fact true.

In early May, the email account of Solar was hacked. Consequently, the privacy of Solar's Twitter and MySpace accounts were also compromised. In the days that followed, several emails were released to the public. Many of which appeared to be attempts to mislead the public about what was going on with Guru. A decent amount of the emails contained drafts of items that were eventually presented through press release. Some of them gave explicit directions to post certain things as being from Guru. Other documents started to surface such as a power of attorney form allegedly filled out by Guru and also a note of sale of a home owned by Guru. The sentiment echoed by many seemed to be that things with Solar haven't exactly been on the up and up. In an interview with Vibe.com, when asked why the hacker did what that they did, the response was swift and simple:

"I'm angry because [of the] things popped off on the Internet about Solar. There were rumors going on about Solar selling Guru’s house while Guru was in the hospital. So when people came forward like Solar’s baby mother, I was like, ‘Let’s expose this guy.’ So that’s why I did it."

That's not the end of the backlash. There are websites, such as FuckSolar.com and others that are dedicated and deeply driven to exposing Solar to be the person that they believe he is. The entire situation is a weird one, and perhaps one that will never be fully understood, but this is where it stands as of now. New articles, Twitter hashtags and Solar diss songs seem to keep surfacing, but perhaps a few lines from Keith Elam himself summarize things the best, as he famously once rapped:

"I never thought that you would crab me Undermine me, and backstab me But I can see clearly now the rain is gone The pain is gone but what you did was still wrong There was a few times I needed your support But you tried to play me like an indoor sport Like racquetball, tennis, pool, whatever All I know is you attempted to be clever Nevertheless, cleverness can't impress Cause now you've been exposed like a person undressed"